The Salon Owners Podcast: Phorest FM Episode 9 (Live From Summit)

Welcome to the Salon Owner’s Podcast, Phorest FM Episode 9. Co-hosted by Killian Vigna and Zoé Bélisle-Springer, this show is a mix of interviews with industry thought-leaders, roundups of our most recent salon owners marketing tips & tricks, all the latest in and around Phorest and what upcoming webinars you can join. Phorest FM is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off.

Phorest FM Episode 9

This is a special edition of Phorest FM, live from the Salon Owners’ Summit 2017! There’s a variety of guests on this episode, including attendees, Summit speakers, and Phorest staff members to share their insights from the day. The main topic discussed with Phorest’s own Connor Keppel is how to best approach reviewing your marketing ideas from the past year.

Audio

Transcript

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Zoe Belisle-Springer, and we’re live from The Summit 2017.

Killian Vigna: We’re live from The Summit. That’s it. So it’s the very first one. We’ve taken a break over the Christmas. We’ve talked about this was going to be our first one. We’re live. We’re sitting in the corner just beside the stage, and we’re trying to get done nice and quick before everyone comes back and that thinks we’re going to be the speakers. So I suppose, oh for the last few months, it’s just been mental, the hype for it. And now we’re finally we’re here and it’s absolutely brilliant. There’s a packed out audience. What 350?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Something like that. Yeah, I don’t know if everybody turned out, but there was quite a good attendance rate, so yeah.

Killian Vigna: Quite a good turn-out. We’ve got four great speakers today. We have Richard Mullender. We’ve Mary Portas, who’s going to do a couch interview.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly, and this morning we had Gill Morris as a first speaker and Andy Bounds as a second speaker just before lunch break.

Killian Vigna: We’re actually going to catch Andy Bounds for a couple of minutes. Chat, just to see how he went on stage and what he thought of Salon Summit.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly, yeah. So Gill was about… just a quick recap on this morning basically. Gill Morris was all about leadership and motivation and-

Killian Vigna: Which is the theme of the summit this year.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s creating a team that is motivated and doesn’t care just about their job but about your salon and bringing it to a next level.

Killian Vigna: Trying to motivate your staff to work better and how you can practice as a team.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: A culture of initiative.

Killian Vigna: Exactly. So there’s been some great points on that. Then we have Andy Bounds, the best-selling author who helps people to communicate, essentially. So it’s all about listening from the other person’s perspective. So it’s not all about me, me, me. How salon owners, they have their USPs, and then they move onto the AFTERs. Then, later on, today, we have, like we just said, we have Richard Mullender, who is … now, it’s an odd one for a hair and beauty summit.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, everybody’s excited for him.

Killian Vigna: Everyone is excited. Everyone’s excited for everyone, but what’s going on here is we have an ex-chief hostage negotiator who used to work with the Metropolitan Police. So I suppose everyone is right now thinking, “What?”

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Why?

Killian Vigna: Yeah, his whole attitude has got to be the secrets of effective listening. So the psychology of understanding and influencing people, cause that was a big part of his role dealing with-

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, like body language and such and such.

Killian Vigna: Exactly. And I actually just caught him earlier on, and he was saying in every hostage negotiation, there’s always a guy standing in front of him. It’s kind of irrelevant, but I just thought it was brilliant. But they guy in front of him always has the notes he wrote on his back. So he’s saying if he turns around, he’s got a whole jacket just fill of notes. So we’re looking forward to hearing a bit more about that later on. And then we have-

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Mary Portas. But it’s an interview, exactly, so it’s On The Couch with Mary Portas is what it’s called, and basically Gill Morris, our first speaker of the day, is going to interview our probably most famous speaker of the day.

Killian Vigna: Queen of the Shops.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Queen of Shops, exactly. Everybody’s looking forward to her actually. So that’s going to be quite interesting because it’s not just going to be a talk. It’s actually going to be an interview, by someone in the industry as well.

Killian Vigna: I’m looking at her CV here, and it’s unbelievable. Businesswoman, advertising exec, retail expert, government advisor, best-selling author, and so on and so on.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: The list goes on.

Killian Vigna: It’s just there’s so much information. I can’t see her getting stuck on any questions here. And again, Gill Morris is going to be interviewing her, who is another fantastic speaker, so Gill is going to get the most out of Mary for that one. And then to cap it all off, because this is our first episode after the Christmas, we have a blog that we’re going to get Connor to go through. And it’s all about how to easily review the last 12 months of your salon marketing ideas.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, exactly. So we have that blog post go out early January on the way back to work kind of thing. And it’s all about questions you should ask yourself and thinking about your business. Being like, “Okay, how were my finances going? How’re my efforts in marketing going? What can I do better? Did this work? And why did it work? And did this not work and why did it not work?

Killian Vigna: And it can be a scary thought. Like everyone knows the end of the year, “oh man, all 12 months of review”. Sometimes you’re trying to think to yourself, “What did we even do at certain stages?” But it’s broken down into five key sections. Connor’s going to go through those later on. It’s not that hard. It’s a little scary, until you start it.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: But it’s definitely something you need to do. It’s so important.

Killian Vigna: Oh 100%. And that’s why we’re going to get the man himself to talk about it.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So before we get into all of this, we’re actually going to walk around in the crowd and gather a little bit of feedback from our attendees and get you to have a feel of what The Summit is in real life.

Killian Vigna: Yeah, cause we just are all out on lunch now, and we’ve just seen them come back in, so we’re going to grab a few before they get to sit down.

Killian Vigna: I suppose coming up to this, you would’ve known all the speakers and stuff. Which speakers are you looking forward to most?

Attendee 1: I mean everyone’s looking forward to sort of seeing Mary Portas. I think that’s obviously everyone’s highlight. However, Andy was a huge surprise. I thought he was brilliant. And obviously I’ve heard a lot about Gill through the years, so it was good to finally see her in person.

Killian Vigna: That’s perfect. I told you, just three short questions. No, really. Thanks. So what salon are you from?

Attendee 2: K kSPA in Whitely, UK.

Killian Vigna: K kSPA in Whitely, UK. And when did you arrive over?

Attendee 2: Last night.

Killian Vigna: Last night. You enjoying it so far?

Attendee 2: Yes, very much.

Killian Vigna: So are you looking forward to any speakers in particular?

Attendee 2: I really enjoyed so far the two speakers that were on this morning. They were really good.

Killian Vigna: Very enthusiastic. Any highlights of the day?

Attendee 2: Meeting people. Everybody in at the Shelbourne. The networking, the food. Everything’s been great. Thanks so much.

Attendee 3: It’s well put together. They’re short. It’s concise. You’re not bored. You’re not wondering where it’s going. It’s not rambling. They come out; they do their bit, they’re done. And it’s effective and to the point. Good. Really good.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Who are you looking forward to hearing the most?

Attendee 3: We weren’t necessarily looking forward to somebody the most, but of course the person you know most is going to be somebody from TV. But, I had researched some of the names as the information came out, so I was looking forward to seeing each of the speakers. I thought the first girl, Gillian was great. The guy who’s just been on was absolutely fantastic. Effective, to the point. He didn’t faff about and he made every laugh. So he really engaged with everybody. But of course, Mary this afternoon is going to be interesting. Let’s hope she lives up to the hype.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Maybe, thanks so much.

Killian Vigna: That’s fantastic, lads. Thanks a million. Enjoy.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Have a good day.

Killian Vigna: Which salon are you from?

Attendee 5: Teamwork Hair Designers.

Killian Vigna: Teamwork Hair Designers. And is it your first year here, is it?

Attendee 5: No, we came two years ago on the very first one, 2015.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: How do you think about this year’s event, compared to the last one you were in?

Attendee 6: Well, I really enjoyed the last speaker. That was a bit different. The one before was the standard marketing type and talk.

Killian Vigna: And this one’s more the leadership things.

Attendee 6: And this one, the one that we just had, was coming at it from a different perspective. An incidentally, I don’t work in the salon. I’m in IT.

Killian Vigna: So were there any particular speakers that you were interested to hear about most?

Attendee 6: I’m quite interested to hear what Mary Portas has got to say later on.

Killian Vigna: Mary Portas is the big one. The couch Q&A.

Attendee 6: But really, that was surprising that I enjoyed the last one very much as well. It was very interesting.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Amazing then, amazing.

Attendee 5: It was very good.

Killian Vigna: Just a last question, was there anything that stood out to you most or you’ve learned most today so far?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Something you’ll take away and bring back into the salon?

Attendee 5: Not learned, but reinforced. You buy the hole, not the drill.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Fair, thank you so much.

Killian Vigna: That’s a good one, thank you so much. Just four questions, lovely. Thanks a million. Have a good day.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Enjoy.

Killian Vigna: So today we’re joined with Andy Bounds, and he’s a best-selling author who helps people to communicate from the other person’s point of view, per se, isn’t it? So we all know body language, eye contact, thing like those, but today then you’re kind of helping salon owners listen to their clients a bit more. Just to start it off, if you want to give a little introduction about yourself.

Andy Bounds: Yeah, sure. Thank you. So as you said, my name’s Andy. My job’s to help people communicate better and sell more. The most important thing with that is the words that come out of your mouth when it matters. So sometimes we go to work thinking, “Today I’m going to be positive.” And then a client annoys you and all of a sudden you start being a bit grumpy to everybody else. So the key thing is, every time you open your mouth, you’ve got to be good. And the best way to be good is to think what’s critical to the other person and talk about that.

So someone’s coming in for a beauty treatment, there’s probably two things are critical. One of the things is their appearance. They want to look a certain way. And the other thing is maintenance. They want to be able to maintain it themselves. They don’t want to come back to you to do the hair again or whatever. So once you know the appearance they want and the maintenance regime they want, it then becomes relatively straightforward for you to be able to provide a good service. But if you haven’t asked them what’s important to them, you’ll say, “Same as last time, is it?” And you’ll just do a basin haircut like I used to have when I was a small boy.

Killian Vigna: That all comes back to … we know salon owners are all aware of their ultimate selling points and stuff like that, and you got everyone to … it was very interactive. It was brilliant here. You got everyone to get up and talk to their neighbour. “What’s your three USPs?” Then another thing you talked about a lot was the AFTERs. That was kind of the new point for salon owners. So, I suppose you’ve got them in the door. You know what’s attracting your clients, and now what can you do after that treatment?

Andy Bounds: Yeah, that’s right. Any business at all tends not to realize it, but actually the reason people buy is not because of the business. It’s because of the AFTERs of it. In other words, why are you better off afterwards? So if you buy the website, you don’t want the website actually. But after the website, hopefully you’ll get more sales. So you own the website. You want sales. And after talking to a lawyer, nobody wants a lawyer, but after talking to one you don’t go to jail. And after talking to an accountant, you don’t pay as much tax as you were going to. Well after coming to a salon, something happens. So they’re not paying for the treatment, they’re paying for what the treatment gives them. Is it feelings of confidence? Is it looking better? Is it love on a Friday night? Is it just to feel better about themselves? What is it? So your key question is not something about the treatment. The key question is, how do you want to feel after this? How do you want to look after this? Right, okay well we’ll get you that.

Killian Vigna: Just getting that personalized aspect into it.

Andy Bounds: Yeah, but talking about after the treatment, not just talking about the treatment.

Killian Vigna: That’s why we want to talk about it, because it was such a … like I said, they all know about their business. How to run their business. But then it’s the AFTERs. And everyone’s just gone straight away, “Huh? What” essentially. So there was actually a really good quote you pulled up there, I didn’t quite catch who it was, but it was all about ‘don’t look towards inspiration, form habits instead’.

Andy Bounds: That’s right. So there’s a lady called Octavia Butler, which is my favorite business quotes. If you read any inspirational quotes book, she isn’t in it, because the first three words of the quote are, “First forget inspiration.” And what she’s saying is, if you want to become better over time, and the quote is “First, forget inspiration. Habits are more dependable. They sustain you, whether you’re inspired or not.” Which uses a lot of long words to say, inspiration is good because it kicks you off. But how we behave all the time is based on the habits we’re in.

So I know people who lie in bed in the morning thinking, “I feel a bit fat today. I won’t be having a cake.” And then they’re in the habit of going to a cake shop on the way to work. And they still do it. Or they go, “Yeah, but Sunday night’s pizza night. There’s nothing I can do.” And you go, “Well, don’t eat pizza.” And they go, “But it’s Sunday!” So habits are the thing that drives everything. So if you want your salon to be more successful, you and your team have to get in different habits. Get in habits of saying different things to your clients. Get in habits of saying different things to each other. And if you do that, it automatically works.

Killian Vigna: That’s what I loved it so much, cause I suppose with Facebook and Twitter and stuff like that, we’re used to every second post nearly is an inspirational quote or motivation. Salon owners, I suppose, were thinking at the time, well, how can I rev up the staff? But it’s not all about inspiration and revving them up first thing on a Monday morning. It’s these habits. So when they come in on a Monday morning, they’ve already inspired themselves.

Andy Bounds: That’s right. You need both. You want inspiration, but it’s not enough on its own. The simplest way to think about this is, inspiration is short term. Habits are long term. You might watch one of these fitness videos and think, “I’m going to lose weight today,” but if you’re in the habit of eating pizza that’s very hard. But you stop eating pizza; it’s easy.

Killian Vigna: It’s a trap we all fall into.

Andy Bounds: Oh absolutely. I’m up for a pizza when we finish this interview now.

Killian Vigna: Listen, Andy, it was brilliant, and we got a great laugh out of the audience here today, cause you actually got everyone up thinking about the box, joining the dots, and stuff like that. It was very fun engagement, and it was a pleasure to listen to you.

Andy Bounds: I’ve enjoyed it, thank you.

Killian Vigna: No worries. So now, as we move over from 2016-2017, one thing we want to go through it, how can you actually review the last 12 months of your salon marketing efforts. So we have the man himself Connor in today to talk about five ways, I suppose, that you can kind of review how your marketing went last year and where you can learn from it and move on. So Connor, what have we got here?

Connor Keppel: So many different ways you can review your marketing. Obviously the way you review it comes down to what you actually did in 2016. I suppose the first thing, even if you haven’t done this in 2016, you should do it for 2017, the question, when it comes to marketing people generally say, “You know what, we should market our business to get more clients and do this X, Y, and Z.” But you should always set out objectives. What are the objectives that you’re marketing? It might be to attract more talent into your salon. There’s a shortage of stylists at the moment. It might be to get your existing clients back more often. It might be to sell more retail. So all these different types. Largely speaking, I find what happens in salons is they kind of do it campaign by campaign basis and we get to the end of the year and it’s just marketing item after marketing item after marketing item. As opposed to actually having a plan for the year and having an objective that you actually want to achieve.

Connor Keppel: Yes, exactly. So in other words, “Oh, the diaries are quiet”, or “We’re down a little bit in retail, let’s do a campaign.” Now you should kind of be a bit agile when it comes to marketing too. That’s fine. So if you do have lots of white space or you do have new products that you weren’t expecting to have earlier in the year, of course, you should market that. But there’s a couple of key ways and key things you can do. Again, coming back to your channels. Take something like social media. How many likes have you gotten on Facebook in the last while? I know that’s what they sometimes call as a vanity metrics.

Killian Vigna: Vanity metrics.

Connor Keppel: Likes itself doesn’t tell you a whole ton, but if you go into insights, you see that your audience is engaged, that people are engaging with your content. That they’re clicking on your images. And if you’re noticing that you’re getting more likes as well, then that’s obviously a measure of that you have an engaged Facebook audience.

Killian Vigna: Yeah, cause we do hear about it. You have some salon owners who kind of have 5,000 people have liked the page, but there are only about 100 people actively engaging with your page. Only those 100 people are going to see your content, not all 5,000. So that’s why you have to be careful with those vanity metrics.

Connor Keppel: Exactly. And the thing with Facebook is, you almost have to pay in this day and age for a business account. I’m not going to bore people, but the way Facebook is set up … Facebook’s saying that they want to put more kind of pure content into people’s feeds, so in other words, if a business wants to actually interrupt someone’s feed with their content, they kind of have to pay for it.

Killian Vigna: Gonna cost them.

Connor Keppel: Absolutely. So that’s one thing. I mean, then there are two different levels. You can pull by channels. You can look at your social media. You can look at different things. Most successfully, really in the salon, to see if your marketing is working, is how many new clients did you get this year? How many referrals did you get? Your existing clients, are they coming back more often then they were the previous year? Are they spending more money? You should always have a goal.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Your retention rate.

Connor Keppel: Retention rate is a fantastic way for instance. And again, we have a philosophy at Phorest from a marketing point of view, that you should always focus on your existing clients. The most successful way of acquiring new clients is through referrals. So in other words, by focusing on that person in the chair or that person you have in the room, that is the single best piece of marketing you can do, ironically, to attract new clients. So in other words, if you want new clients, focus on your existing ones.

Killian Vigna: Yeah ‘cause we hear time and time again, it’s like five to 10 times as much just to get a new client. And then we also hear about that you can have the silent client, so the client is really, really quiet, but that person could be the one that’s giving you 10 new clients every time. Always understand your clients as well.

Connor Keppel: Absolutely.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Another little thing about social media that’s often overlooked, is the online reputation, because people kind of just don’t know about it, maybe? I don’t know. They’re not used to it. How do you go about reviewing that for 2016?

Connor Keppel: Well there’s a couple different ways. A lot of it unfortunately is quite manual. So you have to go and search in your Google profiles and search… it depends on where you are. If you’re in the US, you probably have a lot of reviews on Yelp for instance, or on Google and Facebook. We are introducing something in 2017, very, very shortly, so keep an eye on your email, that’s going to do all that monitoring for you. What you’re talking about, to put a marketing jargon term on it, is what’s known as sentiment audit. In other words, how are people talking about your salon? Is there any commonalty in reviews? Just go back and read it.

It’s kind of not a metric thing. Phorest will introduce something that will help you put a metric on it, which will be all based on automatically monitoring your reviews. The reality is, there’s a lot of qualitative information there. In other words, what are the nuggets within the reviews as well? If you’re hearing more people talk, for instance, Facebook reviews, about a new product you have or maybe talk about a new stylist that’s in the salon, then you might go… well ironically again, “one of the best marketing things I can do is hire great people because they attract amazing new clients. They actually raise the profile of the salon because they’re so talented.” Or maybe it’s a new product you have. So go back to your reviews, absolutely do that. You should be keeping an eye on them anyway.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Because people are often quick to type things. Very direct to the matter.

Killian Vigna: They’re a lot braver online.

Connor Keppel: People are warriors.

Killian Vigna: They’ll tell you one thing in the salon, but once you go online … so you do have to, every couple of days, actively search your salon on Google, even go into incognito, clear your history, and see what people are saying. Because what you see online is not what you’re going to hear in the salon.

Connor Keppel: Correct. And like I said, we’re going to be launching something that’s really going to help you with that and do that all for you automatically. But it is something that you should keep an eye out for definitely.

Killian Vigna: So then we have the final one, which I suppose is kind of the one that people dread most, is the finance, isn’t it.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: How do you review that? Apart from client retention, what would be other key metrics to actually take time and review 2016?

Connor Keppel: There are different metrics around this, and again, I suppose from a marketing point of view, it’s kind of more a business goal I suppose than a marketing one in some aspects. I mean look, your average spend is a huge one. Run a report if you can, on Phorest for instance, and see what the average spend of your clients are, if you increase the average spend of every client by probably something like two, three pounds, two, three euros, whatever a year, every single year consistently, or maybe increase it more by 10 or whatever, that will have a phenomenal effect. You can imagine.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Ripple effect, yeah.

Connor Keppel: Thousands of appointments multiplied by three or four pounds is thousands of pounds. Rather than trying to chase new clients or trying to get them back, using things like a Treat Card, using things like a good loyalty program, and increasing the average spend by even just small, little amount across lots of clients, they won’t feel it. They’ll want to spend. And remember, it’s okay to ask for more money, because the more money somebody spends in your salon, chances are they feel like they’re committing more to it so they’ll have a better experience. And they’re handing over the money, their hard-earned cash, so they obviously are putting a value on this. People are always like, “They spent a lot of money with this anyway, and they don’t want to be doing this,” but in reality, just give them something that’s so valuable in new product. Introduce them to a new service. Do something that actually makes them actually want to come back and spend more. Average spend is one of the biggest finance metrics for me.

You have other things then too, like overheads, and that’s so important. It’s very hard to get into that on the podcast then because it’s there’s so much in it.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s too big.

Connor Keppel: But from a marketing point of view, I think average spend is really, really important. Percentage retail as well. So the percentage of your overall turnover, what percentage of that is retail versus services? Probably in your average salon, honestly some salons are probably 2,3, 4% of revenue is retailing. That’s very low. The reality is, the beauty of retail is if you can sell more retail, it doesn’t require you to keep adding staff. So if you want to add £100,000 more services next year, you probably have to hire to do that. One person can’t treat two people at one time. They can’t style two people at one time. So by selling more-

Killian Vigna: Yeah, that’s more expensive and harder.

Connor Keppel: Exactly. Now it’s worth doing, don’t get me wrong, to expand, but retail is a great opportunity to try to scale without scaling your costs too much.

Killian Vigna: And that’s what Mary Portas said at The Salon Summit is, “Don’t be afraid to upsell your products, because that’s where you’re going to get that little margin.”

Connor Keppel: Yeah, absolutely. Product presents a massive, massive opportunity. And I think it was Andy Bounds who said at The Salon Summit, “You’re not upselling. You’re up-helping.” You asked the right questions. They don’t care, I hate to say it, they don’t care about the salon. I mean, they probably come in and they’re going to enjoy it. But ultimately they’re coming for one reason, and whatever the reason is, is it to look good, to feel great, whatever it may be, if you introduce something to them, ask the right questions. That’s a really, really great opportunity to scale and to sell more. What I would say is, like I said, the two most important, from marketing’s perspective, really are truly are what’s your average spend and really how much retail are you getting out? They would be two big ones. If you can kind of nail those and increase them year on year on year, then you’re doing something right.

Killian Vigna: And again, they’re easy to find in the Phorest system. It does it for you.

Connor Keppel: Absolutely. I mean one other one that I find very, very interesting as well, and it’s kind of more customer service than a marketing thing, is requests. Who’s the most liked? Check how many requests your team are getting. So let’s take Zoe here, for instance. So if myself and Zoe are two stylists, you could look at us on paper and we might cut the exact same amount of people every week. We might, on paper, look like we’re bringing roughly the same money, but sometimes what we find is … I shouldn’t say on paper, on software, it looks like we’re making the same money. But in reality what might be actually happening is you’re such a requested person, that I’m getting your overflow. So in other words, you can’t service all the people that want you, and I’m taking overflow. So if you’re to look at the amounts, you’d go, “Well, they’re on par with each other,” but in actual fact you are ten times more valuable for the business because you are actually the one bringing them in. So a really good metric to look at is requests as well.

And again, this is going to be slightly more business/customer service metric than a marketing metric, but ultimately, Seth Golden says everything you do is marketing. If somebody’s bringing in all these people, from a marketing point of view, what are they doing that makes people want to come back to them? I can guarantee that part of it is their skill, but it’s beyond that. It’s customer service, the magic touch. How can you transfer that to other services and stylists?

Killian Vigna: And again, that was Andy Bounds. It’s not just what’s your USP as a salon, what’s getting people in. It’s what’s the AFTERs. What’s making people come back? That request is a good one, but like you were saying, if you have two and it looks like they’re equal, you wouldn’t have thought it is just one person’s over spill.

Connor Keppel: Now with me, they’ll have their own requests as well, of course, it’s not that one person’s trying-

Killian Vigna: A little something to keep in mind.

Connor Keppel: Absolutely. Then how do you replicate? What is that person doing that everybody else can learn from?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: All right, well I think that sums it up for reviewing 2016. Now, after all these talks that we’ve had today, you should be well inspired for 2017, I suppose.

Connor Keppel: Absolutely.

Killian Vigna: Salon Summit 2017, there you go. So Alex, Ronan, give it to us.

Ronan Perceval: Yeah, I’m wrecked. That was an amazing day. I think just as I was saying there up on stage a few minutes ago, there’s been a common theme that I took from all the speakers. Some of the stuff they were saying was the same, but they were saying it in a different way. And it was great when people say stuff in a different way, because sometimes it doesn’t sink in. And you have to hear it said a few times in different ways. The big theme I got from it, obviously the theme of the Summit was staff motivation, but Gill Morris, for some of you who may not know her, is an expert in helping beauty salons building their teams. She was saying, one of the keys is what are you doing to ensure that person who works for you is developing to the next stage. It’s not about you going to the next stage. It’s about them going to the next stage. If they go the next stage, then you go the next stage. That’s such a true point.

And then Andy Bounds who’s an expert in communication, and he wrote a book called The Jelly Effect, which is quite well known, he actually said the exact same thing in a total different way. Andy has this idea of AFTERs. Basically people don’t want the thing. They don’t want the fancy car. They actually want what the fancy car means. It means, “I’m rich and I’m doing really well and I want people to know I’m doing really well.” That’s why people want that thing. So he’s like, “What do staff members or team players on your team, what’s the AFTERs for them? What is it that working for you will mean for them?” Do you know what I mean? I work for Beauty Salon X, and therefore, I’m one of the best trained therapists in facials there is. And therefore, you need to understand what that is and make sure that’s happening. And it’s the same as what Gill was saying. You’re taking them to the next stage and that’s really what your team-

Killian Vigna: People want to know they can have a career where they can develop and not just do the same things over and over again.

Ronan Perceval: Exactly. And if you can understand what that is, then you have it. And that was kind of led on to the third guy, which was a guy called Richard Mullender who used to be the chief hostage negotiator for the Metropolitan Police, which everyone in the Summit there was like, “What the hell is this? Compared to the salon, how does it apply?” And it applies absolutely perfectly. And I think some people really got that, and other people I think were going to take them awhile to actually understand that. Cause basically he explained that the art of communication is listening. It’s not speaking. Actually nobody listens very well, at all. And he had to listen because he’d have a guy with a gun against his wife’s head or something, and he had to talk them down. He’d have to listen to what the problem was and again, it’s kind of like an AFTER. What the guy was saying isn’t actually what the problem was. It’s what that meant. It was unique.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, he had a really cool example of the point, where he said, think about the best boss you’ve ever worked for and why that was. He had this other person try to figure out what that meant to the person who said that. And it was true. I made the exercise just with myself, thinking about who did I really appreciate as a boss in my past experiences. What does that reflect on me? What does that mean to me and what do I project? What do I need in work life? Do you need recognition? Do you prefer autonomy or leadership? Stuff like that. It was really very interesting.

Killian Vigna: I actually thought, because he did a lot of examples, and I thought one of the best ones was when he was getting to sit there and not ask a question. To have one person talk to you, and you have to do the whole repeat back, “Oh yeah. Oh. Uh,” but you couldn’t ask a question. We all thought it would be real easy, but then we’re sitting there dying to ask that question because we want to develop and tailor towards you.

Ronan Perceval: And you can see how that applies in a meet. If I’m doing a one-on-one with someone, “How did you get on this year? What are you looking to do in the future?” I keep asking questions, and you keep changing the subject on them. Letting somebody actually explain themselves. What they want to do, do you know what I mean? Where do they want to go with their career? And I’m putting that thought on their head by saying, “Do you want to have this job title?” or whatever it is, without actually letting them explain.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Let them ramble, he was saying.

Ronan Perceval: Exactly. He teaches you how to listen, and Andy is telling you what you should be listening for and then Gill was just saying all about development. So all the same thing. And then Mary Portas said the same thing as well. She just said you need to empower your staff by giving them responsibility. It was really good.

Alex Quinn: And I think, the important thing was to remember, it’s obviously not necessarily just about getting your staff to the next level so they can move on and go somewhere else. It’s important to remember that it’s about developing your staff so they can be the best that they can be so your business, so your salon can be the best it can be, and then, therefore, you can be the best salon owner that you can be. It’s literally kind of about building from the ground up I suppose.

Killian Vigna: So remember Gill Morris this morning, pretty much one of the first things she said, was she came across someone who said they didn’t believe in training. And they couldn’t get over then why their staff was still leaving every three months because they were going, “Why would I invest all this training just for my staff member to leave.” And then we’re going, “But they’re leaving anyway because they’re not getting training.”

Ronan Perceval: Yeah, they’re not doing the training.

Killian Vigna: You’ve got to provide value to your staff as well.

Ronan Perceval: I like to think about the … I love that question about the millennials at the end as well, because I fought a lot of salon owners that they say that they find basically people who are under 30, they find it really hard to motivate them. I just think that all those things that were said there is the key to motivating anybody, whatever generation they are. I think that was why it was really good. If you give somebody a purpose, listen to what they are looking for, and then give them the chance to achieve that, anybody’s going to be really, really motivated. I mean, whatever age they are, particularly if you’re young, 21 or 22. So I thought that was great. That that’s the key, guys, don’t get hung up on, “Young people are …”

Alex Quinn: I think it’s nothing to do with necessarily the generation as it is, it’s just young people need leadership. Young people need direction. And they definitely need training. They won’t know everything just by themselves. It’s a competitive industry. There’s a lot of places; there’s a lot of different information, social media now as well… So it’s definitely, I think, if you are a strong leader in your business and you can give them direction, I think that’s all they need. Direction and motivation.

Killian Vigna: And it still comes back to the hiring as well. You’re going to want to hire someone who’s motivated, cause people are starting to move towards, I suppose, hiring people as opposed to hiring skills. It’s easier to teach someone skills than to teach them personality, really. You want to make sure you’re able to work with them. So why would you hire someone that’s really, really good, and you’re never, ever going to be able to get on with?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So overall, Alex, how do you feel about today? After all those months of planning?

Alex Quinn: No, I think… I’m absolutely chuffed, and I’m so delighted to see that so many people enjoyed the day. There were so many people. But our Summit old-timers, that have been with us the very first event, they still love it. They still enjoy it. And they were asking me about 2018.

Ronan Perceval: Most of them said it was the best one.

Alex Quinn: Exactly. It definitely felt like the best Summit we’ve had. We know loads of people liked it, I just hope that everybody had a great time.

Killian Vigna: Well it was mine and Zoe’s first one, and we thought it was absolutely brilliant.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Brilliant.

Killian Vigna: Can’t wait for next year already.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: I can’t wait for the after-party!

Ronan Perceval: One of the really positive things, just the final thing that I thought would take the whole thing, was that this industry has a huge future. A lot of industries are really worried today with AI and disruption from the internet, and actually, the salon industry has such a huge future, because the world is moving to experiences and salons deliver experiences every day. So that’s really cool.

Alex Quinn: It’s not something you can ever move online.

Ronan Perceval: It was a great end.

Killian Vigna: Yeah, I think we’ll end on that note, because I’m looking around here, and everyone is just dying to go for a drink.